Atomic Dog
NPT
by TC

Most of you probably don’t know this, but I suffer from a medical condition known as NPT. It’s not life threatening, but it’s forced me to make some adjustments in my life. I wouldn’t exactly call myself disabled or handicapped in any way, but it does affect the way I do things. For instance, I can’t roll over too quickly when I’m lying in bed, nor can I wear any sleepwear that’s too constricting.

And it’s my solemn responsibility to warn anyone I’m sleeping with about the condition so that she isn’t unduly alarmed when she wakes up and sees me having an attack of NPT.

NPT doesn’t have any telethons to support it, nor does it have any famous actors to act as spokesmen. No, NPT, or Nocturnal Penile Tumescence, is a condition that most people won’t touch.

All joshing aside, NPT is what nighttime erections are called by clinical types and they’re a good thing. They’re a great indicator that my bioavailable levels of Testosterone are up to snuff. If I didn’t ever wake up to find myself sporting a flagpole, or sporting the occasional spontaneous woodie during waking hours, then I’d probably have to question my levels of free Testosterone.

The same applies to virtually any male.

And being able to achieve erections while looking at erotic pictures isn’t the same. Flipping through the pages of Penthouse might give you a hard on, but that doesn’t necessarily mean your T levels are in a desirable range. It’s those spontaneous boners that are really important, clinically speaking.

Similarly, high T levels seem to correlate pretty strongly with sex drive. While individual sexual appetites vary enormously, a man with healthy T levels should probably feel a very strong, compelling, single-minded urge to have sex at least twice a week, unless his wife or girlfriend bears a strong resemblance to Dr. Zaius from The Planet of the Apes.

There are all kinds of ways — aside from lab work — that hint at Testosterone levels, but most are based on pretty vague subjective feelings like depression or a lack of energy. However, there are lots of physical signs that point to T levels. Most are quite vague and some are even esoteric, but together they might paint an accurate picture of one’s T status. In any event, these physical traits are pretty darn interesting.

For instance, visceral obesity is associated with lower T levels. In fact, in middle-aged men, belly fat correlates inversely with serum T levels! That doesn’t mean that every fat guy out there has low T levels, but if you’re relatively thin except for a Buddha-like belly, you could very well suffer from low Testosterone.

The hairline is also somewhat indicative of T levels. Ever notice that women and boys have straight frontal hairlines? That’s because of T, or lack of it. Androgenization, courtesy of Testosterone, is accompanied by a slight temporal recession of the hairline. And, should the predisposition exist, baldness can follow. It’s entirely possible that if you’re an adult male and your hairline is equal to the kid from Malcolm in the Middle, your male hormone never kicked in.

Got dry skin? Fine wrinkles? Nary a pimple in sight? That could also be a sign of low Testosterone. And forgive me for asking, but how’s your semen production? Can you only fill a thimble, or can you come damn close to filling up one of those big 7-11 Slurpee cups? If it’s the former, compliment yourself on your aim, but realize that your semen production is closely related to T levels.

Now let’s take a look at your hands. Hold them up in front of you as if you were commanding Sandra Bullock’s wayward bus to halt. Is your ring finger (the fourth finger, counting the thumb) longer that the index finger (the second finger)?

If it is, and you’re male, good for you. In the first trimester of pregnancy, when you were firmly entrenched in momma’s womb, hormones started to roll up their sleeves to help build your body. It’s this early exposure to T that seems to make a difference between the lengths of those two fingers.

Biologists call this the 2D:4D ratio.

No one really know why this happens, but it’s been known for a long time that some bone growth is determined by T; high, chiseled cheekbones, for instance.

One researcher, John Manning of the University of Liverpool, has even done studies that indicate that exceptional athletes and math whizzes have extra long ring fingers (in comparison to their index fingers), perhaps suggesting that they might haven gotten extra doses of T when they were just gestatin’.

Of course, Testosterone isn’t the only thing that determines athletic prowess, but it might make a bigger difference than any of us realize. Let’s take the flexor digitorum brevis muscle as an example. It’s a muscle that helps flex the outer four toes. Experiments with rats have shown that the spinal cord motor nuclei that innervate that muscle are sexually dimorphic and their size is regulated by T levels! The more T, the bigger the spinal cord motor nuclei, and thus, potentially, a faster, more quick-reflexed rat.

Maybe the same thing applies to humans and some extra T might have somehow enhanced the nervous systems of athletes?

But let’s get back to the finger length discussion. Equally amazing and downright compelling about this whole 2D:4D discussion is the fact that women generally have digits of similar length, with the notable exception of lesbians. They tend to have ratios that are similar to those of men.

It’s certainly not foolproof, though. Don’t look at your girlfriend’s hands, discover that she’s got a conspicuous 2D:4D ratio and automatically start rifling through the drawers of her nightstand in a frantic search for a box that contains sexy pictures of J-Lo and a Martina Navratilova signature-model vibrator. What researchers have found is if they look at hundreds of straight women and hundreds of lesbians, many more lesbians would have ring fingers that were longer than their index fingers.

Somehow, these women might have gotten an errant dose — an accidental tsunami of Testosterone — during their first trimester in the womb. As a result (and this is just one theory), their sexual preferences leaned strongly toward other women. Were it not for their lack of penises, the presence of breasts, and an affinity for LPGA-sponsored events, they might as well have been men.

Many of these examples don’t necessarily correlate with your current T-status. Some, like an extreme 2D:4D ratio, a masculine hairline, or who knows, maybe even relative strength of the flexor digitorum brevis, might be indications of high T-levels during youth.

None of that would necessarily mean that you currently have high T levels. Unfortunately, age hacks away at T levels, along with everything else.

However, if you’re experiencing a lack of libido, semen production on par with a hypogonadal hamster, or a little round belly that shakes when you laugh like a bowlful of jelly, then you might want to campaign your doctor for T replacement. Either that, or supplement with pro-Testosterone formulas.

Remember, only you can support NPT.

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